What makes the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of Terry Kinney’s direction of Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden superior in every way to the 1955 Elia Kazan directed Paul Osborn scripted film?
Let me count the ways.
First, Steppenwolf understands Steinbeck’s story.
Despite his deserved fame as a stage and screen director, Elia Kazan totally missed what East of Eden is all about. For Steinbeck’s towering mythic examination of the origins of human passion, Kazan substituted a personal sordid tale of aberrant psychology: “East of Eden is more personal to me; it is more my own story. One hates one’s father; then rebels against him; finally one cares for him and recovers oneself, understanding and forgiving him, and you say to yourself, ‘Yes, he is like that’, and you are no longer afraid.” 1
To his credit, Kazan did realize that Cal was at the center of the story. However, he missed the other half of the story’s core – Cal’s father, Adam.
Cal and Adam live in a relationship analogous to that in which the Biblical Cain lives with God, the first part of the Trinity. Like all of us, Cal is a direct descendent of Cain, still working out the relationship with his father, and with his God. Kazan did not see this dimension of the Adam character: “Now you know that the old man would have died without a kind word.” Maybe a human being in a Freudian psychological drama would have withheld a final blessing from his son, but not the loving God of the universe in a mythological investigation of God’s relationship with children created in His image and likeness. And that is what Steinbeck has written. That is what Kazan did not see. And that is how Steppenwolf succeeds.
Second, Steppenwolf boldly and heroically presents Steinbeck’s central Biblical etymological investigation in the center of the play, just as Steinbeck places it in the center of his novel.
The core of the novel, and of Steppenwolf’s play, involves a word in the seventh verse of the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis -“timshel”.
Contrary to popular belief, Cain, the oldest son of Adam and Eve, is not portrayed as some monstrous deviant, but the rather as the prototype for a human being.2
Steinbeck sees the story of Cain as a true account of the human default propensity to sin. When Cain offers to sacrifice himself after slaying his brother, God tells him that it is never too late to make a good choice: “If thou doest, thou mayest (“Timshel”) be accepted, and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.”
Steinbeck finds in this word the basis for human hope. As children of Cain, humans may choose to follow in Cain’s path through weakness, filth, and murder, or take God’s advice, and choose different course. The image and likeness of God was not totally corrupted or obliterated in the Garden. People, even Cain, even Cal, remain capable of doing good. God wants them to always have the choice.
Steinbeck sees that in Genesis, because God loves Cain, enmity, though always our natural condition, does not have to control our fate. God commends Cain for having the right intent (“worship”), but reproves Cain for not having the right heart. God urges Cain to still his turbulent passions and change his heart through repentance. Cain, like Cal, had heretofore used guilt to avoid repentance because he did not believe in his Father’s grace. Steppenwolf’s adaptation masterfully follows the novel’s lead, building to the final scene where Adam, the universal father, cries “Timshel” to the universal erring son, Cal, just moments before he dies. The words, the blessing, and the forgiveness save Cal from the path of destruction and allows his descendants the possibility of a new kind of future.
Third, Kazan “decided to do only last 3rd of book. Begin when boys are 16. Damned good decision. That way the story has a unity, clarity, a leading man, one single leading man, and no narration whatsoever.” 3 This was a fatal decision. Kazan did not see that Steinbeck’s narrative already had a unity and a clarity, that Steinbeck’s narrative portions were essential counterpoints to the dialogue, and that the story was about the power of the past to continue to affect subsequent generations. Steppenwolf, to its great credit, saw all of this.
Fourth, Kazan cast personalities, rather than actors capable of creating the characters Steinbeck needed for his story
Cast in the manner of the Actor’s Studio, strong personalities, vaguely similar to one or two traits of Steinbeck’s characters (with James Dean’s “twisted, fidgety kid” quality enough of a character for Kazan’s Cal. The fact that Raymond Massey “couldn’t stand” Dean was the only trait Kazan needed to cast him as Dean’s on-screen father. Julie Harris became Abra simply because Harris’ patience would be necessary to get Dean through the shooting. “She would adjust her performance to whatever the new kid did.” 4 Kazan’s actors were encouraged to see the characters as a means to reveal their own personalities, however irrelevant they may be to Steinbeck’s characters.
On the other hand, Steppenwolf, as usual, has assembled a group of enormously talented actors, if not already matching Steinbeck’s vision, then capable through their great art of embodying the nuances in Steinbeck’s descriptions.
The Steppenwolf cast fulfills Steinbeck’s descriptions to a tee. Whereas Jo van Fleet was cast as Cathy Ames because Kazan knew she could “play age”, Kate Arrington is clearly on the stage because she can create a character with these complicated contradictions and mysteries, “a malformed soul”, who prefers to live in darkness, with “a face of innocence”, “a pretty child who became a pretty woman, neither confined in dress or conduct.” Arrington’s Cathy is clearly a frightened child drawn to escape into Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.” Her death scene, in which she gives herself the Eucharist of the Damned, (Take, Eat”, Take, Drink”) sends chills through the audience.
Her devoted husband Adam is played by the wonderful and wondrous Tim Hopper. Hopper’s Adam, incapable of seeing Cathy as she is, draws us into his distorted image. Where he sees “a kind of light spreading out from her. And everything changing color. And the world opening out,” we see a man hopelessly, desperately in love.
Francis Guinan’s Samuel Hamilton is the balance to Hopper’s delusion. He is “all full of hope and “as good as we got”. Whenever he and Hopper are on stage their chemical presence together seems to conjure a far greater dynamic than just two actors. Named for the priest Samuel, Hamilton “had his name called clear by the Lord God.” As played by Guinan, we can see he is still listening for more. To Adam’s dangerous illusions he vows, “It’s my duty to take this thing of yours and kick it in the face, then raise it up and spread slime on it thick enough to blot out its dangerous light…. I should straighten out your tangled thoughts, show you that the impulse is gray as lead and rotten as a dead cow in wet weather. If I did my duty well, I could give you back your bad old life and feel good about it, and welcome you back to the musty membership in the lodge. It’s the duty of a friend. I had a friend who did the duty once for me. But I’m a false friend.” Guinan captures the character’s Solomonic paradox – he knows exactly what should be done, but lacks the courage to do it.
Richard Davalos seemed cast as Aron by Kazan for the sole purpose of never doing anything which might detract attention from James Dean. Steppenwolf wisely cast an actor of the first rank with Casey Thomas Brown. Mr. Brown creates the character Steinbeck drew, and plays it, indeed, with an endearing “openness that allows his affection to plunge like a puppy.”
To act in James Dean’s shadow is no enviable job. But Steppenwolf has simply cast another remarkable actor who, unlike Dean, obviously knows how to create a compelling character from a script in rehearsal. Aaron Himelstein is just wonderful as Caleb. Within seconds James Dean is but a forgotten name from the past. Mr. Himelstein takes the role by the scruff of the neck, shakes it, and runs with it. The result is a performance to stand in line to see. In his performance you can see how a small hint dropped by the author can emerge as a full blown character in the hands of a real actor – Cal “peers out ready to retreat or attack” or “Secret punishment was almost a creative thing with him.”
Himelstein’s scenes with Arrington, Hopper, and Brown will break your heart. The final scene between his Cal and Hopper’s Adam ranks as the most tear-inducing scene since Beth died in Little Women. But here tears of joy and victory mingle with tears of regret.
As usual at Steppenwolf, the entire cast is made up of stars in their own right. Brittany Uomoleale is a far cry from her haunting Emma in Grand Concourse. She shows what an actress more appropriate than Julie Harris can do with the role of Abra: “from her earliest days Abra wanted to be an adult. She was beyond prettiness.” (To understand: see Ms. Uomoleale’s performance.) Stephen Park’s Lee is so good and so essential to the unfolding of the drama that he makes the giant hole of Lee’s absence in Kazan’s film even more unforgivable.
Finally, the Steppenwolf production proves that all of Warner Brothers’ money could not purchase as profound and beautiful a visual image for their movie as the scene design by Walt Spangler provides for this East of Eden. The towering husk of a dead tree, baling-wired together, standing over the action as a monument and testament to failure, despair, and delusion, could not be a more perfect or stunning understanding of East of Eden.
The Chinese servant Lee says, “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us…. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule – a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting – only the deeply personal and familiar.”
Steppenwolf’s East of Eden, due to the passion, dedication, imagination, artistry, and wisdom of adapter Frank Galati and director Terry Kinney, can be experienced as such a glorious and beautiful story. You will feel it is true for you, because it is about you.
Steppenwolf has accomplished a great and wonderful thing.
1 Kazan, Elia. Kazan on Directing.
2 Kass, Leon The Beginning of Wisdom, Reading Genesis.
3 Kazan, Elia. The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan
4 Kazan, Elia. A Life
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